The Bishops Conference of France has agreed to submit the proposed liturgical manual to the Holy See

Mass at St. Pierre's church in Bondy, France. (Photo by Farid Djemmal/Ciric)

Will Mass on the beautiful Mediterranean island of Corsica soon be celebrated in the local language?

That is the question behind a dossier that may initially appear purely technical, i.e. the translation into Corsican of the Roman Missal, the liturgical manual that contains the documents and text and music instructions necessary to celebrate Mass in the Roman Rite.

Meeting at their plenary assembly at Lourdes Nov. 3-8, the French bishops have now decided to submit the dossier to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments at the Vatican.

“The present practice is for some (Mass) readings to be in Corsican,” Bishop Olivier de Germay of Ajaccio told La Croix in February.

“More than three years ago, I also established a commission that has been working on a missal in the Corsican language,” he said. “But that takes times and needs to be validated by the Vatican.”

“So, at the end of the process, we may finally be able to celebrate Mass in Corsican,” Bishop de Germay said.

The commission’s work has drawn extensively on a Corsican translation of the 1971 French Missal and it has also looked at the process that led to Roman recognition of the missal in the Breton language.

Meanwhile, the Diocese of Ajaccio required the agreement of the Bishops Conference of France, which it has now received, in order to proceed to the next stage with the Holy See.

Ever since his installation in 2012, Bishop de Germay has insisted on the significance of the project for many Corsican Catholics.

Taking cultural reality into consideration

“Not all Corsicans are necessarily asking for it,” he told Radio RCF in Lourdes. “Some are very keen while others are more or less indifferent.”

“For us, however, the point is to give consideration to the local cultural reality,” he said.

“Language is a part of Corsican culture. Corsican people slip from one language to the other as they talk,” he said. “So the Church also takes into account the cultural reality of the place where it is located.”

The diocese will now forward the file to Rome and seek its approval for the translations by the commission, which included both academics as well as Latin and Greek specialists.

“The liturgy expresses the faith of the Church so, if a translation is poorly done, that can confuse people and give a false vision of the faith,” Bishop de Germay told Radio RCF.

“Certainly, Mass will not be celebrated in Corsican on a daily basis,” he said. “It will mainly be done on the most significant feasts.”

These include Sept. 8, the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, to whom Corsica has been consecrated since 1735.

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